The Man Who Used to be a Hunter
by ParallaxNoir
Summary: Anyone who looked closely could see that the man who walked down the street had lost everything. (Implied Destiel)


The Man Who Used to be a Hunter

**Disclaimer: None of Supernatural is mine. Only these words.**

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The man who walked down the street had lost everything.

Anyone who watched him closely could see this. They could see it in how he walked. They could see how his body bent beneath the weight of the pain he carried like so many bricks slung over his tired shoulders. His feet shuffled through the sidewalk to the rhythm of a clock whose hands never quite reached twelve. His boots, worn nearly through the soles, scraped along the rough pavement like the match struck too slowly to light. And like that match, no matter how many times they struck the cement, he couldn't quite light the tinder behind his eyes.

Anyone who watched him closely could see he had lost everything, but not from how he was dressed. His pants were dusted the color of an Old West hero, and the creases of his leather jacket were the worry lines of more men than he would ever know. The pitchy blackness of his shirt was lightened by dirt and darkened by bloodstains, made rough by scorch marks and soft by wear. His clothes had been worn for years by both life and death, but this would have been even if he hadn't lost everything. These were so because he was a man who used to be a hunter.

No, anyone who watched him closely could see that he had lost everything by way he kept himself. His face, that had once been softened by angel feathers, was rough now with unshaven hairs. His hands, calloused as they were from his being a man who was once a hunter, hadn't seen a rifle's trigger or a knife's hilt in years. And ever since those hands had fallen out of practice and purpose, they had also fallen out of keep, their nails ripped and broken over packed lines of grime. The skin of his fingers cracked, split, and brittle. The palms of his hands forgotten from those that had once needed their hold.

Anyone who watched him closely could see that he had lost everything by the way he had lost himself. Anyone who passed too closely by him was overwhelmed by the acrid stink of the alcohol that poisoned his breath. They could see the way his eyes reflected the lights of the world without either soaking them in or letting off any light of their own. Those earth-light green eyes that had been laid on men and monsters, that had travelled over towns and cities and prairies and fields and homes and houses and forests and lakes. Those earth-light green eyes that had finally found peace in crystal blue ones that shone of Heaven. Those earth-light green eyes that had served the man who used to be a hunter every time he dove into hellfire when there was another soul to be saved.

Anyone who watched him closely could see that he had lost everything, by the way he walked, by the way he kept himself, and by the way he had lost himself. But only those people who knew him well understood that he had lost _everything_. They saw the after, but never the before, and certainly not the synapse in between where everything that made up his helter skelter life had fallen away, leaving behind only the warped wood frame, all held up with rusted nails that stung of "just barely." Because at his core, that whole life that he'd led was full of "just barely"s. He survived the blazed that had claimed his mother's blood, but "just barely." He'd slid back into the work of his fathers with the help of the brother that nearly made it out, but "just barely." He'd been asked to death's dinner table, but had missed his appointment by hairs but "just barely." He'd bargained for the breath of the one person in the world whose own was more important to him that that which he breathed, signing his soul away for sacrifice but "just barely." He'd pried his way through the gates that Hell burned and swelled beneath, breathing its silken black fumes through the cracks to light their fires in the homes of hearts, but "just barely." He was ripped and shredded, torn and mangled beneath the surface until the pores of madness set into his skull and he climbed to the top of a mountain of bodies to better see the false light of day that could never really shine through the smoke of hellfire, but "just barely." Miraculously, he was gripped tight and pulled from perdition's grasp and back into the world of men, but "just barely." He cracked open Hell itself, releasing the King to command his broken, infectious denizens, but then sealed him away again, back into his little backbone box, but "just barely." He fought in the wars between Heaven and Hell, burying soldiers of either side, burning their landscapes and building new bridges. He slaughtered men, monsters, and grotesque creatures somewhere in between. He found hope on unlikely wings with pain on their undersides. He lived, he died, he killed, he saved, and most of all, he survived. He filled the shoes of his fathers before him, and met his quota of blood near tenfold, as a man who used to be a hunter should. But "just barely."

Anyone who watched him closely could tell that he had lost everything. They saw a man who had lost the mother that had felt the warmth of her boys' baby skin, but would never feel the rough, stiff cloth of a graduation gown, or the smooth silk of a wedding tux bowtie. They saw a man who had lost the father he worshipped like the god that he never could. They saw a man who had lost the father his own father had been afraid to be. They saw a man who had lost the brother whose blood ran as sure in his veins as that which pulsed through his own. They saw a man who had lost the angel-soft breath of his lover's caress. They saw a man who had lost the purpose that had driven him to believe that what he did mattered. That believed that every life he saved was one he'd never have to lose. They saw a man who had lost love and hope and faith and peace. They saw a man who used to be a hunter.

Anyone who watched him closely could tell that he had lost everything. All they saw was a man who stumbled through what was left of his borrowed time listlessly. A man who was too lost to wander. Too broken to stand. Too hurt to try. Too tired to care. They saw a man who found more warmth at the bottom of a bottle than in any place he could curl up in for the night at an hourly rate just to ride on burning sails through his nightmares. They saw a man whose tears had dried up long ago, leaving only the cracked, dusty panes of the glass that were now too clouded to look through to his soul.

Anyone who watched him closely could see that Dean Winchester had lost everything. And to the random passerby on the street who saw him, he wasn't even that. He was just a man. A man who had lost everything. A man who used to be a hunter.


End file.
